Heaven and Hell - Swedenborg Foundation

HEAVEN AND HELL 456
Word, from the simple truth that God is good itself, love itself,
and mercy itself; and that good itself cannot do evil to anyone,
and love itself and mercy itself cannot cast man away from
itself, because this is contrary to the very essence of mercy and
love, thus contrary to the Divine itself. Therefore those who
think from an enlightened mind clearly perceive, when they
read the Word, that God never turns himself away from man;
and as he never turns himself away from him he deals with him
from goodness, love, and mercy, that is, wills good to him,
loves him, and is merciful to him. And from this they see that
the sense of the letter of the Word, in which such things are
declared, has stored up within itself a spiritual sense, and that
these expressions that are used in the sense of the letter in
accommodation to man’s apprehension and according to his
first and general ideas are to be explained in accordance with
the spiritual sense.
546. Those who are enlightened see further that good and
evil are two opposites, and are therefore opposed as heaven and
hell are, and that all good is from heaven and all evil from hell;
and as it is the Divine of the Lord that makes heaven (n.
7–12), nothing but good flows into man from the Lord, and
nothing but evil from hell; thus the Lord is continually
withdrawing man from evil and leading him to good, while
hell is continually leading man into evil. Unless man were
between these two, he could have no thought nor any will, still
less any freedom or any choice; for all these man has by virtue
of the equilibrium between good and evil; consequently if the
Lord should turn himself away, leaving man to evil alone, man
would cease to be man. All this shows that the Lord flows into
every man with good, into the evil man as well as the good; but
with the difference that the Lord is continually withdrawing
the evil man from evil and is continually leading the good man
to good; and this difference lies in the man himself, because he
is the recipient.
547. From this it is clear that it is from hell that man does
evil, and from the Lord that he does good. But man believes